To Be With The One You Love
by oncethrown
Summary: This was the same stuff. Same ugly label and slightly sinister dark glass, same silly name in cheesy font. Same harsh smell as Shawn screwed off the cap, and same throat burning taste as he took a pull at the bottle.


Title:

Authoress: oncethrown

Other BMW stories: A Whole New World, My Shadow Is The Only One That Walks Beside Me

**Read This:** In "If You Can't Be With The One You Love" ( an episode from season 5) Cory is so depressed that he steals liquor from his father and convinces Shawn to get drunk with him, they have the kind of conversation that slash fic thrives on, and in a "very special" twist, Shawn instantly becomes and alcoholic, and I always thought it was interesting that when Cory walks him home Shawn tells him "I'm doing this for you. You're worried about me, you stop thinking about Topanga." So this is my little dealio on why Shawn isn't an alcoholic.

Shawn clutched the shoulder strap of his back pack with white knuckled desperation as he entered his and Jack's and Eric's apartment. His grip loosened only very slightly as he discovered neither was in the living room.

"Jack?" He called anxiously, "Eric?"

No answer. Shawn allowed himself to exhale. He crossed into the kitchen, took a bottle of Coke out of the fridge and poured himself half a glass, tossing a couple of ice cubes in as a nervous after thought. He took a gulp to wet his dry mouth and then took the cup and his back pack to his room. He set himself down in front of the door on his knees so no one would be able to walk in on him. Then he cautiously slid the brown paper bag out of his back pack, and pulled the bottle out of the bag.

It was easy to acquire alcohol in an apartment building full of college kids. If he had just wanted alcohol he could have stolen Eric's rum from the fridge that Eric never drank, or one of Jack's beers. But Shawn had wanted this. It was easy to find someone willing to buy you what you wanted. This was the same stuff that he and Cory had finished off at the party last week. Same ugly label and slightly sinister dark glass, same silly name in cheesy font. Same harsh smell as he screwed off the cap, and same throat burning taste as he took a pull at the bottle and quickly chased it with the Coke.

The kid that had supplied him told him it would be better mixed, so he filled the half glass of Coke the rest of the way up with the contents of the bottle, screwed the cap back on, stashed the bottle under a pile of clothes in his closet and settled back against the door, staring at the ice cubes as they twirled gently.

Alcohol reduces a night of details, insinuations, subtleties, and nuances into a few main events that, by the next morning, lose the myriad of confusing colors that they occurred in and become blissfully black and white. All the worries and day to day intricacies that Shawn woke up with every morning were gone the morning after that party. All he had woken up with that morning was the conversation he and Cory had had running through his head over and over.

_"You know what, Shawnie? I always thought that Topanga was the one person I could never live without. But she's gone. And you're here. And I'm alive, so it must be you,"_ Shawn heard Cory's voice echoing in the shower the morning.

_"I'd take a bullet for you man,"_ he heard himself admitting in total slurring sincerity as he brushed his teeth.

But it was the next two lines of that conversation that had been humming in his brain all day. An incessant melody drowning out the all the outside voices and harmonizing to every thought he didn't want himself to be thinking.

_"Shawnie, I love you"_

_"I love you too, Cory. And I'm not ashamed."_

Shawn's whiskey and Coke was beginning to sink in now and the unremitting litany that had played in his head all day was becoming less frantic. The walls that he had built up were falling and he started to slide into the thoughts he had been forbidding himself to think all day. A little more whiskey and he would be ready to admit he had been thinking them since way before he and Cory's drunken night.

Cory's arms around him. His arms around Cory. What might have happened if the bum hadn't come back. If the cops hadn't pulled up. If they hadn't gotten caught. Where might the night have taken them?

Shawn was desperate to find a way to repeat that night and find out. That's why he was sitting alone in his room hiding a bottle of the foulest tasting thing he had ever drunk. He kind of liked the feeling the whiskey gave him, but sitting here, twirling the ice around in his glass, he was realizing the real high from last night had come from Cory.

Cory, who Topanga had made completely miserable. Cory, who couldn't admit that there was no hope for him and Topanga anymore. Cory, who Shawn was only almost sure had felt the same thing.

"Well, there's no point in finishing this by myself," Shawn thought sadly. He poked his head out the door, and quickly scanned for Jack or Eric. Neither was back. He walked to the bathroom and poured out the rest of his drink, rinsed the cup and then, with a little difficulty splashed mouthwash in the sink to cover up the smell. Then he went back to his room and laid down on his bed.

Shawn floated in pleasant day dreams for a while until the buzz began to wear off. Then the discomfort that came with thinking about what his little fantasies _meant_ snuck back into his mind.

He needed another chance. He needed a plan to get Cory's attention. Something dramatic. He'd probably have to do something stupid. He needed them to both be drunk again. He needed to get Cory's mind off of Topanga.

Still trying to work out a plan, Shawn went back to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth for the second time today, just to make sure that Jack or Eric couldn't smell alcohol on him. He was quickly satisfyingly clean but still without a plan. He got dressed and pulled the bottle out of the pile of clothes to hide it more secretly in the box springs of his mattress, where he was confident no one would ever look, when a thought occurred to him.

He stared at the bottle.

That was it. It was going to be dramatic, it was going to be stupid, but it might work.

And where might it lead?

Authoress Note: I know, not the greatest thing ever, but I really wanted to post something today and the fact that Shawn was always the crux of the "very special episodes" always pissed me off especially in this one because it's Cory who starts drinking.


End file.
